The punishing financial implications of looking after a disabled or chronically ill relative are revealed in new research that shows almost three-quarters of people are worse off as a result of caring.

Five organisations representing 85% of NHS mental health staff have withdrawn from the united front campaigning against the government’s mental health bill.

Lancashire Social Services have branded the closure of a care home at six hours notice ‘appalling’ – and admitted they had no idea it was shutting.

A jury has returned a verdict of suicide on a 14-year-old boy who hanged himself in a privately run secure unit. Adam Rickwood became the youngest child to have died in penal custody for 25 years when he hanged himself with his shoelaces at the Hassockfield secure training centre in County Durham in August 2004.

Parents of children with congenital heart disease can now check surgery survival rates at the UK’s 13 specialist heart centres online. The initiative comes 10 years after the inquiry into the unnecessary deaths of babies treated at Bristol’s Royal Infirmary in the 1980s and 1990s.

Child sex offenders should be encouraged to seek treatment rather than be threatened with jail, the police’s child protection chief says. Jim Gamble, of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), said it was a practical way of dealing with the scale of the problem.

A coroner called yesterday for an urgent review of the use of restraint on young offenders after a jury returned a suicide verdict on a vulnerable 14-year-old who hanged himself with his shoelaces at a privately-run secure unit.

A police child protection chief has been criticised for arguing that paedophiles convicted of looking at child pornography should not necessarily go to prison. Jim Gamble of the Child Exploitation

Speaking to the National Pensions Convention in Blackpool, Paul Snell, CSCI’s Chief Inspector, paid tribute to the valuable role the NPC fulfils in raising the profile of older people and the issues that matter to the older generation.

Complaints to the city’s social care services rose by 20 per cent last year, according to a new report. City of York Council dealt with 111 complaints between April 1, 2006 and March 31, 2007.